Week 2 - our residential week

It’s been a really fun and interesting week. We’ve realised and conquered fears and learned each others talents on the residential week.

Before we set off we had to double check shopping lists do the shopping, where we seemed to take over the food shop! And then we set off. It took us about an hour to get to there and, because of everyone’s different tastes in music, headphones were definitely needed!

We stayed in a huge stately home that had been rented by Opendoor Adventure. We were given a tour and shown our rooms before meeting Luke, Neil and Alex who were our tutors for all our activities.

They told us about everything we’d be doing through the week, gave us the house rules and then took us outside for team building games. We were split into two teams and did separate games which tested all our skills. We did struggle at first but then everyone got the hang of things.

Lots of walking - in caves...

Every day we did things like river walking, cave walking, high ropes and more team building games. When we went caving, the first cave we had to get through was really small and enclosed. This caused a lot of fear and worry for some group members, especially those with claustrophobia.

At this point the team started pulling together, trying to calm and motivate some of us while helping to pull others out at the exit. At one point we had to make it through some caves without using our head torches. Some of us found it more difficult than others, but we got through it.

...in water

The river walk was scary at first but half way through some of us started liking it. We did a few activities in the water like the water trust exercise, where we had to dive in the water backwards and rely on our team to watch out for each other.

...in the air

The high ropes were scary for us all. A fair few of us were afraid of heights which made it a struggle but with motivation from our team mates we nearly all got through it. We did abseiling and the ‘leap of faith’. Abseiling was the one that a lot of us struggled with the most.

...and on water

On the last day we did raft building. We got into two teams and built two rafts. Only one of them would be going on the water. We had to choose the one which we thought would float best and then go and save a dummy and bring it back to land on that raft.

We each then had to give a presentation which was really scary. We were then able to do the assault course which ended up being a fun race for us all.

All week we had to take it in turns to cook, wash up and keep the kitchen clean and tidy and do other tasks like making sure all the kit was ready for each day’s activities. We had a great time and came back knowing each other a lot better.

Last updated: Tuesday 14 October 2014